


time & space in mind, points along a line

by lucasmp4



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Amy Santiago Loves Jake Peralta, Angst, Anxiety, Dissociation, Episode: s04e01 Coral Palms, Fluff, Friendship, Introspection, Jake Peralta Loves Amy Santiago, Multi, Nicknames, Pining, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-14 19:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16919196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucasmp4/pseuds/lucasmp4
Summary: brooklyn nine-nine oneshots and prompts if you give me some!title from you & me//tally hall





	1. starting out a road, carefully unload (i)

**Author's Note:**

> i really hope y'all like these random scrappy frankenstein-esque stories i keep coming up with
> 
> thanks for reading & pls tell me what you liked (or didn't) in a comment,,, hearing from you guys legitimately makes my day
> 
> i PROMISE i will write more than just amy/gina at some point but apparently it's the only thing that works for my brain anymore

Six Drink Amy is sad, and then sappy, and then out like a goddamn light.

 

Six Drink Amy also happens to be nuzzled into Gina’s collarbone, snoring, legs in Gina’s lap and drooling all over her nice blouse. Gina would never admit it, but it’s really adorable- so adorable that Gina can’t find it within herself to look away, even as she hears the quiet background music of Kwazy Cupcakes beckoning her to the flashing lights and pretty colors. She never sees Amy like this- sprawled out, loose, soft and smooth. Not that Gina doesn’t enjoy seeing Amy in frenzy, but it’s an entirely new kind of infatuation that’s filling her lungs and heating her cheeks at the moment. 

 

Ugh.  _ Infatuation _ . She sounds like Amy. 

 

Gina’s not one to have actual real genuine feelings for anyone. Or if she does, she’s an expert at shoving them down to a deep pit in her subconscious where she doesn’t have to think about them ever again. (She grew up with Jake, after all.) Well, there were a couple girls in high school that she thought maybe- maybe-

 

Anyway. Gina likes to hit it and quit it, as Charles would say. She relishes in meaningless sex with no strings attached, gets a rush every time she ends things without remorse. If she were willing to consider why, or to examine her subconscious like she does to others in her Psych class, she could probably link it to a lack of control over her relationships (platonic, familial, romantic) from a young age and a fear of vulnerability that she shares with Jake. 

 

But consider: She’s not willing to.

 

On the inside Gina’s lonely. She’s hurt, she’s pining, she’s angry. 

 

Actually, at the moment, she’s lonely and hurt and pining and angry and very, very still because Amy is shifting as she sleeps and there’s a moment where Gina thinks she might wake up and stare up at her with those big brown eyes.

 

Gina doesn’t know what she’d do then. 

 

It’s about two in the morning. The window is cracked in the basement as Gina turns her phone off and there’s a cold breeze wafting through. Good. It’s a little stuffy in here, and Gina’s neck is very warm where Amy’s cheek is pressed against it. If Gina were willing to be cliche, she would say her skin is burning at the contact. All things considered, she’s a little willing to be cliche.

 

It’s dark save for some shafts of light filtering through the cracks in the door to upstairs, but if Gina squints, she can make out Terry’s form slumped onto the floor. Jake, thinner since he got back from being undercover, is tossing and turning on the other side of the couch. Gina has the strange and irrational urge to wake him up, to point at Amy and whisper,  _ Look how cute she is. _ If only to take him out of whatever nightmare he seems to be having.

 

So she does it. Yolo. 

 

He wakes up with a choked little gasp. His eyes are wide, even in the darkness. “Wh-”

 

Gina shushes him. “You’re good, Jacober. It’s all Gucci.” She makes a small gesture for him to sit beside her on the couch. 

 

“All Versace,” He mumbles, probably not even registering that he’s doing it. It’s one of their oldest and most frequently referenced inside jokes, kind of a way to check in on each other without getting too gross and mushy. Jake awkwardly clambers over and sits on the side of Gina not currently occupied by Amy’s ass. Carefully avoiding Amy’s legs, Jake leans his weight on Gina’s side.

 

They sit in silence for a while, so long that Gina starts to wonder if Jake’s fallen asleep. He shifts, though, to look at Amy, who still looks so, so gorgeous in the light coming from Gina’s phone.

 

“She really is pretty, isn’t she?” Jake murmurs. “I like her a lot.”   
  


Gina smirks, even though he can’t see it. “If you and her become a thing, you’ve gotta promise to share.” 

 

“Only if she wants to,” says Jake through a yawn.

 

“Why wouldn’t she? I’m a goddamn treasure.” The stark confidence in her voice is somewhat undermined by the softness of the moment and the fact that she’s never really had to be as On around Jake. They’re besties like that. 


	2. open eyed and all the light is falling (ii)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can see it now, see the exhaustion weighing on her as he watches the wrinkles on her forehead smooth out in sleep, the dark circles under her eyes standing out starkly against her flushed cheeks. Jake just likes to see her at peace. Also, he can’t make himself sleep, no matter how hard he tries. 
> 
> (He’s been awake for like three days now.)
> 
>  
> 
> OR: Everything is different when Jake gets back from Florida, and everything continues to be different for a significant while afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is just me dumping my recent anxiety Moments on one (1) jake peralta and i just watched the first few episodes of s4 so the florida hiatus was On The Brain
> 
> also? 1. i hope the parallels aren't annoyingly obvious and 2. i wrote this in comic sans, so,
> 
>  
> 
> look at me! updating! i love you all pls leave a comment of what you liked and what you didn't and kudos if you want  
> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Amy’s asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow at 9am. She’s exhausted, all the time, from the night shift and, presumably, from working the Figgis case while Jake was off in  _ Florida _ being all depressed and useless. 

 

He can see it now, see the exhaustion weighing on her as he watches the wrinkles on her forehead smooth out in sleep, the dark circles under her eyes standing out starkly against her flushed cheeks. Jake just likes to see her at peace. Also, he can’t make himself sleep, no matter how hard he tries. 

 

(He’s been awake for like three days now.)

 

Amy’s the best thing that ever happened to him. Amy is the most wonderful thing in his life, and he’s never going to forgive himself for leaving her. Jake knows if she were awake she would just be able to  _ tell _ he’s thinking bad thoughts and run her fingers through his hair and look at him all softly, the corners of her mouth tugged downward, and tell him how much he means to her. But she’s not awake, and Jake is stuck seeing dust float through thin shafts of light that cut through the space where their blackout curtains don’t quite meet the edge of the window, thinking about how everything feels like it’s shifted a bit to the left.

 

He feels off-kilter and unsettled, as if when he came back from Florida, he went through a portal to another universe where everything is just a little bit different. Just a little bit wrong. The world spun without him and Charles has a kid and what if nothing’s ever going to be the same again? What if things will never go back to normal?

 

Jake is home. He’s in bed with the love of his life, surrounded by his very best friends in a city that he’s loved since birth, and he’s so on edge he can’t appreciate any of it. Every pause in conversation is a gap opening between him and his friends, his family, a fracture that will grow and a space that will widen until he breaks off completely, secluded on his own little island, alone, alone,  _ alone- _

 

This used to happen to him a lot, when Jake was younger. He used to wake up and think he’d been dropped into another world, with a feeling so urgent and succinct that something was wrong, wrong, wrong, and that the end of life as he knew it was imminent and catastrophic. In high school it was Gina who’d wrap an arm around his shoulders and hand him a latte and prattle on about gossip, interjecting her dry wit into her stories until he was laughing so hard he couldn’t find it in himself to focus on the blaring alarm going off in his mind. In the academy it was Rosa who’d press up against his side reassuringly and without words, or set a bottle of vodka down on the coffee table and say in that steady voice of hers that they were watching Disney movies and getting trashed, leaving no room for argument. But Rosa is snappy and Gina is distracted, and Amy, poor Amy, is just trying to recover. 

 

Quite frankly, the Nine-Nine has no room for his drama at the moment. So it’s fine. NBT sitch.

 

\--

 

Jake isn’t sleeping at night. He’s acting weird. Has been ever since he got back, actually- and a little before that (read: the whole throat-punch/basketball/Holt kiss/Not Clicking debacle.) Amy’s just worried about him, which is a feeling she’s extremely accustomed to after doing six months of nothing  _ but _ worrying about him. She kind of thought she’d be done by now. 

 

She wakes up at 7pm (ugh,  _ ugh _ , fuck CJ and  _ fuck _ the night shift) and he’s been up for hours, judging by the coldness of the bed next to her and the sound of someone clanging around in the kitchen. Amy stands in the doorway of her bedroom and watches him scramble eggs, shoulder blades making sharper lines through the back of his shirt than Amy’s ever seen them. All throughout the absence, Charles would periodically remind her that Jake asked him to make sure she took care of herself, and Charles would  _ die _ before breaking that promise.

 

(That whole time, Amy couldn’t help but wonder,  _ If Charles is taking care of me, who’s taking care of Jake? _ )

 

Jake is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. Jake is the best thing in her life, and she desperately, desperately wants him to be happy. But her happiness is his happiness, or maybe the other way around, and she’s just not sure what that means for her when all she’s done for half a year is work herself to the bone trying to get him back. If he were next to her, he’d look at her all gentle with that little fond half smile he gets and brush a lock of hair behind her ear and say,  _ You don’t have to worry anymore, I’m here, I’m okay, Ames.  _ But he’s not next to her, and Amy is stuck staring at the slanting shadows the salt and pepper shakers on the table make as the sun sinks lower in the sky, trying to remember how it feels to not be terrified for the love of her life. 

 

She feels like she’s never going to get through to him, like she’ll be desperately trying to understand him for the rest of her life while he drifts, helpless and far, far away from her. Amy worries, it’s what she does, but she rarely has the manic sort of drive that infected her, infected all of them, while Jake and Holt were away. But it’s over, they’re back,  _ he’s _ back, and she’s stuck between not quite believing that it’s true and not quite reconciling it with the fact that she’s still waking up with the other side of the bed cold. 

 

So now all she has is this buzzing anxiety in her chest that blares a steady reminder that it’s  _ not _ actually over, he’s going to be taken away again, or worse, it  _ is _ over. It’s over, and this is what she’s left with. Her mentor, unhappy, and her friends, irritated and miserable. The love of her life, haunted, the changes he went through emphasized by the sad smile he gives her as he piles scrambled eggs onto a plate. It’s over, but  _ nothing is okay- _

 

This used to happen a lot when Amy was younger. She used to finish an exam and look over the preparation binder frantically, obsessively, sure that she’d gotten everything wrong, wrong, wrong, while her parents begged her to just let it be over. In middle school it was Diego who wrestled the binder away from her, hid it away but didn’t destroy it, leading her to the game room in their house to kick her oldest brother’s ass in Cubilete until she was smiling so wide in victory that she forgot all about the absurdly thick binder wedged between Diego’s mattress and his wall. After Diego went to college it was Dante who brought her tea and made her sit with him in the living room, away from her obsessively thorough study worksheets, and painted her nails while they watched Golden Girls or the most dramatic episodes of  _ La Fuerza de Amor  _ until she was so at peace that she could breathe a little easier at the thought of her exam coming back with less than 100. But Diego is in Canada with his husband and Dante is in LA changing the fashion world, and Jake, poor Jake, is just trying to recover. 

 

Quite frankly, she doesn’t even know how she would approach this. God, she needs a binder. 


End file.
